Many gambling machines are arranged to accept monies in the form of paper bills. The accepted money is credited to a player for betting or wagering during play of the game. In general, the gambling machine includes a bill acceptor which accepts paper or bill-type money. This bill acceptor includes a bill validator mechanism arranged to validate each bill to ensure that it is authentic. If the bill is not deemed authentic, it is rejected.
Many gambling machines are arranged to accept paper monies in a wide variety of denominations. For example, the machine may be arranged to accept $5, $10 and $20 dollar bills. In such event, the bill validator is arranged to determine the denomination of the bill.
The bill acceptor also includes a cash box. Regardless of the denomination of the accepted bill, the bill acceptor is arranged to deliver each accepted bill to the cash box. Because of the desire to reduce the complexity and size of each gaming machine, a single cash box is utilized. Thus, even when a machine is arranged to accept bills of differing denominations, all of the bills are delivered to one cash box.
The cash box is a secure repository for the accepted bill monies. At certain intervals, personnel remove the full or partially-full cash box from the gambling machine. An empty cash box is installed in replacement.
The removed cash box containing money is taken to a secure count room. The cash box is opened and the currency is removed and delivered to a bill sorter. The bill sorter is a specially configured machine for accepting bills, validating and sorting them, and calculating the total value of the bills sorted. The bill sorter sorts the bills from a provided cash box by denomination, and provides a record of the bills which were sorted and their total value. This process is generally referred to in the industry as a “soft count” process.
A gaming operator may compare the output of the bill sorter to a transaction record of the gaming machine from which the cash box was removed. The transaction record at the gaming machine provides information regarding the value of the bills received by the machine during the time period a particular cash box was installed. The value of the bills accepted by the gaming machine should be identical to the value of the bills sorted by the bill sorter in the soft count process. If there is a discrepancy, there is an indication that there may have been a breach in the security of the monies from the time they were received until they were counted, or that there is a malfunction or other problem associated with the gaming machine or count process which is resulting in errors.
In accordance with the present invention, a gaming machine is arranged to accept not only monetary bills, but vouchers. A method and apparatus is disclosed for using vouchers in a gaming system including at least one gaming machine. Also disclosed are method and apparatus for sorting and accounting for the vouchers utilized in the gaming system in order to ensure the integrity of the system.